Elizabeth Moje shares the potential of disciplinary literacy to empower youth on Classroom Caffeine podcast

Lindsay Persohn, Assistant Professor, Literacy Studies, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, hosts Classroom Caffeine. The purpose of the podcast series is to connect education researchers and teachers around research findings that have the potential to improve classroom practice.

Moje discussed how her experience as a high school educator led her to study literacy as socially and culturally constructed, as well as culturally meditated and motivated. Her experiences since then as an adult educator and university professor and administrator have continued to influence her research and practice. 

Moje said, “The current moment is really shaping who I am as an educator—really working explicitly to be antiracist and decolonizing in my practice, learning to question assumptions that I’ve had about students.” For example, Moje shared how she has taken steps to foreground community building in her undergraduate class in a way that places students above course content. 

Much of Moje’s scholarship is on disciplinary literacy instruction. “Disciplinary literacy work is all about justice and equity,” said Moje. “If you first engage young people in the practices of the discipline and then help them learn the language of the discipline, but then also engage them in critiquing that language, then they have more power to gain access to those spaces and to transform those spaces.” 

Moje shared her “Four Es Model” for thinking about disciplinary literacy instruction: 

• Enact the practices.
• Engineer students’ capacity to engage in those practices. 
• Examine words and ways with words.
• Evaluate words and ways with words in the discipline.

Moje closed with a message to teachers, encouraging them to persevere in the profession and recognizing their contributions to youth, families, communities, and society.